The Source of Conflict Between Hamilton & Burr

It seems that Burr and Hamilton were almost destined to fight their famous duel in 1804 that resulted in the death of Hamilton and the death of Burr's political career. Their mutual animosity began in 1791 when Aaron Burr captured a Senate seat from Hamilton's father-in-law, Philip Schuyler. The election of 1800 heated the fires of the conflict considerably. That conflict was rather complicated and requires a brief explanation.

One of the flaws with the original Constitution was that it did not make a distinction in the way the President and the Vice-President were chosen by the Electoral College. Originally, the candidate with the most electoral votes was made Presidents and the candidate with the second most votes was made Vice-President. This flawed system helped make Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic-Republican, Vice-President to the Federalist John Adams in 1796.

To ensure that the two senior members of the executive branch would not be members of different parties in the 1800 election, the Democratic-Republican, who got far more votes than John Adams, planned to have all of their electors vote for both Jefferson and Burr, with the exception of one elector who would vote only for Jefferson. That plan failed, however, and both Burr and Jefferson got the exact same number of votes. This sent the election to the House of Representatives. After many rounds of voting, the election remained deadlocked. In the meantime, Burr began campaigning to make himself President, instead of Jefferson. To prevent Burr from becoming President, Alexander Hamilton convinced the Federalists to support Jefferson.